Last Day of Work

Yesterday was both Josh's and my last day at work: quite a different experience for each of us. Josh had a career here in San Francisco as a respected artist, whereas I had a job, and a crappy one at that (though I love my co-workers, friends that are like family who I will miss beyond words but dear God am I glad to be out of there!). Josh's experience at New Bohemia has spawned a life path that he is ready to bring east.
Josh's last job at New Bohemia was Tony's Pizza Napoletana in North Beach where he got a final chance to showcase his talent alongside his revered boss, Damon Styer, whose blog about his adventures in sign painting can be viewed here. I mostly just stood around yesterday.
After work we went over to the Eagle Tavern where we enjoyed some beers with our co-workers and some of San Francisco's finest leather daddies. Today Josh and I were audience members at the final taping of View from the Bay, a local daytime talk show. What a range of characters we experienced in the course of 24 hours: from bears and metal heads to Oakland church ladies singing gospel songs during the commercial break! I love this town.
We have less than a week now to get all our stuff together before we fly to Seattle for our friends' wedding. We get back next Saturday night and we hit the road on Sunday, August 1st. The first leg of our trip will include a visit with our friends Nick and Fanny in Ojai, followed by a visit to LA and then we're off to Vegas! We'll keep you posted along the way so stay tuned for our Blog Across America!

The Dwinding Days

Our days here in SF are quickly coming to an end (we have less than a month!) and we want to make sure that we both experience and document as much as we can before we go. If anyone's interested, I have a list-in-progress of things I love but may have taken for granted in my decade in SF. It's here if you want to check it out.
You can also check out our new (and skeletal) flickr account which has some photos of things we've been doing recently, like Finest Dearest's last show (there's more of those here if you're interested), our impromptu trip to Santa Cruz, and Josh's co-worker Caitlin's up-and-coming urban organic farm.
Josh has also been finishing up some signs like this one here for Ian at Double Crossed Tattoos. We'll have a set on flickr for his sign work soon, but until then everything's all just mixed in. That's all I've got for today. Thanks again for checking us out. -M&J

Josh is famous!

or, at least he's featured in a photo on a couple of blogs about New Bohemia.

http://signpaintermovie.blogspot.com/

BD Signs has been hijacked!!!

That's right: it's a mutiny. I'm taking over this blog because, simply, I will actually utilize it. This is Meredith, by the way, Josh's fiance.
We will be leaving San Francisco soon for eastward adventures and we'll be driving across this great country of ours. I personally have never successfully driven across country (two attempts, two car accidents: long stories. Third time's a charm?) and I'm more excited than I can express. We plan to chronicle our adventures in this here blog and to make it all cohesive, we plan to find old hand-painted (or not) signs along the way and post them here. I hear there's an old neon sign graveyard of sorts in Las Vegas and that sounds awesome. Also, I want to thrift across country (thank you thethriftshopper.com) so to make this usurpation worth it, you'll have to hear about my passions too: Clothes!!! Vintage clothes!! Thanks for reading. We'll see you on the road!

Sign Painter Movie

Today a film crew began shooting at New Bohemia for a documentary about America's sign painters. Here's a link to their blog:
http://signpaintermovie.blogspot.com/
Check it out!

Best Dressed Signs

Welcome to Best Dressed Signs! This is the place to access all my newest sign and art adventures. My names is Josh Luke and I am currently a sign painter at New Bohemia Signs in San Francisco, a company which has afforded me great opportunities to enhance my skills and work as an artist while carrying on the classic tradition of hand painted signs. We recently had a sign show at Adobe Books. The unsold pieces from this show are featured on the New Bohemia website (click on the link above). New Bohemia will be featured in some documentaries soon which when they come out, I will post links to.
Looking forward to posting more soon!